The present invention is a method to develop models to predict physical and chemical properties of petroleum hydrocarbon fluids from their optical spectra.
The model is then used to determine these physical and chemical properties of fluids that may not be present or accessible in sufficient quantity to measure the properties by conventional analytical methods.
One use of the invention is the non-destructive prediction of the chemical and physical properties of picoliter quantities of petroleum fluids trapped in inclusions in quartz and carbonate minerals and cements from only the measurement of the fluid's fluorescence spectrum. A second use is the prediction of the properties of hydrocarbon fluids that are remote from the measuring apparatus and, therefore, not able to be acquired or isolated non-destructively from their environment. Thus, the prediction of the properties of hydrocarbon fluid stains or thin layers on rocks or water from the remote measurement of the hydrocarbon fluorescence are examples. Logging of predicted fluid properties using down hole fluorescence probes is a third example.